I write about the Internet technologies and upstarts that are disrupting advertising and media faster than ever. I'm living this disruption, so I might as well write about it, too. I spent nine years as chief of BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau writing about the leading edge of technology and business, and I continue to do so for a variety of publications. Follow my posts here by clicking the "+ Follow" link under my name. You can also find me at my personal Web site RobHof.com, follow me on Twitter (robhof), Circle me on Google+, subscribe to me on Facebook, and email me (robert.hof@gmail.com).

Sorry, Brands--You Can't Get Into Google+ Yet (Without an Invite)

Google+, the social network that Google began testing last week, has been enormously popular among the select digerati chosen to try it out. But brands and businesses hankering to establish a presence on Google+ are finding it anything but social. They’re not even allowed to set up what Google is calling “non-user profiles,” or the Googley equivalent of Facebook Pages.

Some are anyway, but Google says it’s going to shut most of them down–except for a few hundred who will be chosen from thousands of businesses applying to try out a pilot profile program to begin in a couple of weeks. That has angered some who believe Google’s “double standard” is unfair.

Christian Oestlien, the “ads lead” for social advertising for the Google+ Project, concedes that not allowing most businesses into what Google hopes will finally become its first really successful stab at a social network isn’t exactly ideal. And in a few months, Google will shut down even the pilot sites and then ask those businesses to start over as it opens up business and brand profiles to the world. “We know that asking businesses and brands to wait a few months until we figure out a more optimal experience is a lot to ask,” says Oestlien.

Oestlien, who created this video to explain Google’s thinking on this, says brand and business profiles need to be different than profiles of people. “We wanted to have a clear vision of how we would integrate these non-users into Google +,” he says. “The way you communicate with a brand is quite different from how you communicate with your friends.”

If the enthusiasm of businesses to get on Google+ pleases Google, the situation also exposes once again how far the search giant trails behind Facebook. Some brands there, such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks, have attracted millions of “followers,” and they offer contests, coupons, and other attractions to customers and prospects.

Oestlien is coy about how Google business or brand profiles might look, but he clearly is looking at differentiating them from Facebook Pages. For one, he anticipates having different features for small or local businesses vs. large national or international brands. For another, he says in a reference to Facebook, he expects these profiles will go “much further than just building a page and aggregating followers.”

Most of all, he says, Google wants to provide businesses with a way to extend their Google Profiles across many of Google’s services, including advertising, not just create a siloed page inside Google+–which, after all, is itself intended to cut across most or all of Google’s services. “We want to create a situation that when they’re engaged with an audience, that relationship can carry across other Google products,” says Oestlien.

I’ve been somewhat skeptical of how much social connections will provide a signal of interest in a brand or especially purchasing intent that’s as relevant as typing in a search term. But Oestlien says Google’s research indicates there’s great marketing value in social signals. He won’t get specific, but he says, “You’re much more likely to pay attention to advertising if people you know are paying attention to it. All of our testing to date has shown that when users see ads with personal invitations to view them, they respond much more often.”

But again, that’s something Facebook already knows–and is well down the road to proving to advertisers. Google will have to scramble to catch up.

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Great article. You’ve articulated the current story about brand pages more thoroughly than I’ve seen anywhere else.

Personally I think it’s unecessary for Google to go ahead and close the business pages that have already sprung up, why not just leave them there? They’ll all migrate their pages over anyway when the proper platform is ready.

Perhaps this is about the supply and demand game that Google seem to be playing (to great effect) by deliberately limiting availability to new users.

It’s funny that Google and Facebook make so much from ads. I have yet to click on a single ad that gets put up in Facebook and the same goes for ads off of other sites. I just sort of see them as white noise and clutter on websites so I don’t even pay attention to them. Someone must be clicking on them but no one I know seems to be doing it. That leads me to believe that there is some over evaluation going on when companies that make money off of web ads start talking revenue. As for Google+, so far i have not seen any ads popping up in there, just a nice, clean, and easy to get around application.